How To Adjust Backlit Keyboard Brightness In Windows 10

Most of the mid to high-end laptops today offer backlit keyboards. Backlit keyboards make typing easier at low light conditions, especially for those who cannot do touch typing.

Backlit keyboards or illuminated keyboards can be turned on or off using keyboard shortcuts on all laptops. For instance, I can use Fn + Spacebar key to turn on the keyboard backlight on my ThinkPad T series laptop.

Many laptop users often ask if there is a dedicated setting to adjust the backlit keyboard brightness in Windows 10. The answer is both yes and no.

Adjusting backlit keyboard brightness in Windows 10

While, sadly, there is no built-in setting in Windows 10 to adjust or change backlit keyboard settings, some OEMs do offer their own software to change default settings of backlit keyboard brightness. For instance, Dell Windows 10 laptops offer settings to turn on or off the backlit keyboard, adjust the keyboard brightness, automatically turn off the backlight after 5/10/30/60/300 seconds of inactivity.

Dell users can open Keyboard properties dialog and then switch to Backlight tab to see all keyboard brightness settings.

Sony also offers options to adjust default settings of keyboard brightness on some of its models. You can open VAIO Control Center and then click Keyboard and Mouse and Backlit Keyboard to see settings. Here, you can configure the software to automatically turn on or off the backlit keyboard to automatically turn on or off based on ambient light. Like Dell, Sony also offers an option to automatically turn off the keyboard backlight after inactivity of keyboard operations for X amount of time.

Lenovo doesn’t offer much to change the default settings of backlit keyboard. However, you can set the keyboard brightness to medium or high brightness using Fn + Space hotkey. That is, if you press Fn + Space once, the driver turns on the backlit keyboard with medium brightness. Pressing Fn + Spacebar again changes the brightness to high. Pressing the hotkey again will turn off the backlit keyboard.

All recent MacBook models automatically adjust keyboard brightness in low light using the built-in light sensor. One can also adjust keyboard backlight settings manually using hotkeys on the keyboard.

You can find settings to automatically turn off keyboard backlight after a certain period of inactivity by opening Boot Camp Control Panel. To open it, right-click on the Boot Camp icon in the system tray and then click Boot Camp Control Panel option.

Microsoft Surface users can use Alt + F2 to increase the keyboard brightness and Alt + F1 to decrease the brightness.